Blue-Eyed Boy
by iridescent spirals
Summary: Mummy, with her rosy pink cheeks and bright cerulean eyes, kisses him good night and tells him he's special. So why does he still feel like he's only ordinary?


_**Blue-eyed boy – n. a favoured person of someone in authority.**_

**Written for the Jigsaw Puzzle Challenge, No. 140.**

* * *

Mummy kisses him before bed every night.

She sits on the edge of the duvet and holds his small face in her soft white hands as her fingers stroke tufts of his dark hair, murmuring quiet words of affection. Then she makes sure that the blanket is tucked securely under his chin so that his head is the only visible part of his body, a splash of paleness against the dark coloured bedspread.

'Good night, Argus,' she whispers as her lips brush against his forehead. 'You're going to be great one day.'

'But Mummy,' his high, childish voice pips in argument, squirming uncomfortably against the suffocating material, 'I don't think I will.'

'Of course you're going to, silly,' she laughs, her cheeks rosy pink and cerulean eyes bright with amusement in the flickering candlelight, 'you're my special boy.'

And then she blows out the candle and leaves in a swirl of smoky darkness.

He lies on his back for a long while after she has gone, staring up at the ceiling in consternation. If Mummy, Mummy who is always right about things, tells him he's special, why does he still feel like he's only ordinary?

* * *

Mummy always treats him best.

They live in a big house with all his cousins and Mummy looks after them all, but he always gets the preferential treatment.

Whenever the aroma of baking fills their home he gets the biggest biscuit of the lot every time without fail. During meals he is always dished with a larger helping, sometimes even a little more than the meagre food on Mummy's plate. All the children have second-hand clothes which are mended in several places, forming patchworks of dark and light, but he feels Mummy would put in a little more effort with the needle when holding a piece of cloth that belongs to him in her hand.

The other children do not dare to tease or bully him, because they know Mummy always takes his side.

'All of your cousins are from your father's side,' she confides to him one night, 'that's why they're different. They're not special like you. Not special like _us_.'

There is a feral, almost bestial look in her beautiful cerulean eyes and he shrinks away from the gentle features which have suddenly turned so frightening.

'If Daddy wasn't special, why did you love him?' he asks hesitantly, afraid that he had asked the wrong question but his curiosity burning.

'People do odd things sometimes,' she smiles, her face back to normalcy, 'but he's dead and gone now; you're all that's left of him. And that's what matters most. Not the past mistakes we make, but the present.'

* * *

Everything changes in the July of his eleventh year.

Mummy sinks into a reclusion, and it terrifies him. Every day she seems to sit by the window looking out at the skies – it hardly matters if they're blue and clear or grey and stormy – refusing to speak to everyone else.

She doesn't bake treats anymore or inspects on their chores everyday. She doesn't care about the fact she's hardly eating, or if the food she swallows tastes like cardboard. She doesn't go sit by his bed and hold his hand and kiss him goodnight anymore.

On the last day of July, she leaves her place, and resumes work as if the past month hasn't happened.

Oh, but it has, no matter how much he tries to deny.

* * *

When he reaches out for the biggest biscuit a cousin beats him to it, and he automatically glances towards Mummy because he always gets the best, but Mummy doesn't look at him and continues what she was doing.

Mummy doesn't serve him big helpings anymore – 'we hardly have enough to eat and you should jolly well be grateful there's something on the plate in front of you' – and mends his clothes with inattentive carelessness and doesn't bat a single eyelid in worry at the fraying threads on his clothes.

Mummy doesn't kiss him goodnight anymore.

She doesn't hold his face in her soft, pale hands and stroke his hair while whispering words of affection. She doesn't tuck him securely in bed and blow out his candles.

She doesn't reassure him he's special anymore.

Deep down in his heart, he always knew he was ordinary.

* * *

Later in his life, he will learn of magic and spells and Hogwarts, and all the possibilities that never were which were supposed to come in the form of a single letter.


End file.
